Lord Byron's Poems Lesson Plan

How do form, rhythm/meter, and content interact in these poems?

Students can consider the ways in which form and meter might be determined by content and vice versa. In some cases, Byron chooses forms and meters which follow conventions implied by content, such as "There's not a joy the world can give," an elegy written in elegaic stanzas (iambic pentameter, ABAB rhyming). Students should also think about the expressive charge of formal and metric choices which are not obviously conventional. For instance, they might observe a consonance between the rolling anapests of "The Destruction of Sennacherib" and soldiers descending in waves, or between the halting rhythm of "When...